‘That’s what your ma said.’
‘Away and fuck yourself. You’d be in the back of a peeler wagon right now if it wasn’t for me. Who’s the one with a new top? Meanwhile you’re walking round looking like Stig of the Dump.’
‘Up your hole. You bolted before we were even inside the shop.’
Marty peeked round the bin and down the entry. There was no sign of anyone. He pulled out a packet of Regal and lit one. He took a drag and exhaled, clicking out three neat smoke-rings. He then passed the cigarette to Petesy.
‘Here. Have a smoke and dry your eyes.’
Petesy took the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. His cheeks hollowed as he took a draw. One of his cousins had taught him how to smoke when he was eleven but he could never blow smoke-rings like Marty.
Marty looked at his new top. ‘That Cara’s definitely going to let me ride her when she sees this.’
‘Wise up to yourself. You’ve no chance.’
‘That not what your ma said.’
Petesy went quiet. He’d lived with his granny for three years since his mother moved to Derry with a guy she’d met one Saturday night at the GAA club in Andy Town. He was about to hand the fag back but hesitated and took another long drag. Marty received the butt, his voice going up an octave.
‘What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?’
Petesy smiled, pleased to get his own back. Marty took the last drag and flicked the butt off the wall. A shower of red ash cascaded to the wet ground.
Petesy remembered him doing the same thing to Brendy McIlroy. ‘Mackers’, everyone called him. He was two years older than them and had three big brothers. He had been picking on Petesy, slagging him off, saying his ma had run off with the first bit of dick she got her hands on. After a minute of ignoring him, Petesy told him to go fuck himself. It was what Mackers wanted. He announced, John Wayne-style, he was going to finish his can of Harp, then come over and beat the fuck out of Petesy. Marty sat there, not saying anything. Then he took the final drag from his cigarette and flicked it in Mackers’ face. They went for each other and Petesy piled on. Some old boy pulled them apart, threatening to call the peelers. That was Marty though. He didn’t give a fuck.
Hiding in the entry of High Street, Marty stroked his new top and thought about Cara. She was a wee ride. He was going to take her somewhere with the money they’d made from dealing the week before.
‘Has your cousin come through with more gear yet?’ he asked.
‘He said to come up to the Ardoyne and see him tomorrow.’
‘Nice one,’ Marty said.
THREE
Joe Lynch sat on the black leather sofa and waited.
The receptionist was slim, early thirties. She had looked at him over the top of her glasses, saying Dr Burton would be right with him. Lynch asked how long the appointment was. She told him half an hour.
Nothing about the plush reception suggested a psychologist’s office. Lynch had imagined One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Formica floors, sudden outbursts, occasional drooling. Instead it was burgundy carpets, dark mahogany and abstract painting.
He chided himself. This was a mistake. This was what you got for going to the doctor’s — an appointment with a shrink. All he’d wanted were a few pills, just to help him sleep. He didn’t need his head examined. A few nights’ kip, he’d be right as rain. Instead he got a week’s worth of tablets and an appointment with Sigmund Freud here.
Lynch was fine, when he’d just come out of prison. He’d gone to London. Needed to get away from Belfast. All the old contacts, the familiar faces, the knowing looks. He’d stayed almost two years, trying to make a life for himself, working in bars, doing shift-work in kitchens. One day, he just woke up and realized, enough was enough. He couldn’t do it any more. The constant lying, making things up, taking shit from middle managers, baby Hitlers he could have dropped in half a second. There was nothing else to do. He had to go back.
It was coming home when the sleep problem started. Lynch tried to laugh it off at first, joking about the Northern Irish air — too frigging fresh. He told himself to harden up. He’d done interrogations, solitary confinement, twenty-four-hour lock-down. He could do a few all-nighters. After three months he realized why they used sleep deprivation as a torture technique. He felt like a ghost, as if he only partially existed. Dr MacSorley had suggested the psychologist. It might help to talk. Lynch didn’t think so, but made a deal. It seemed to be all the rage these days: negotiation, compromise, agreements. He’d see the psychologist, in return for a prescription. MacSorley was in his sixties, an old-school doctor. He gave him a week’s worth of tablets.
‘Come back after the appointment and I’ll give you next week’s.’ He smiled. ‘Just to keep you honest Joe.’
MacSorley had been around the block a few times and it was only this that made Lynch agree to the deal.
Dr Burton’s office was on the fifteenth floor of a glass tower-block on Bedford Street. Out the window Lynch saw the green copper dome of Belfast City Hall. After ninety years, the shining white limestone had faded to grey. Daily life had taken its toll and the architect’s allusions to civic virtue were now no more than a vague memory. In the gardens, the Belfast wheel arced upwards, lifting spectators above the roofline of the City Hall. From its height, tourists gazed out at the hills that surrounded Belfast. The mountains themselves, looking down on the city, like disapproving adults on their recalcitrant offspring. Lynch looked towards the waters of Belfast Lough and the dark green slopes of the Cavehill in the distance. The colours were muted, depressed by the dark grey sky and the low January light.
As he waited, Lynch reminded himself he wasn’t a fruitcake. It was simple. He just couldn’t sleep.
A door opened and Dr Burton walked into reception. He wore a brown suit and had a swarthy complexion. He was in his fifties and spoke in a low, confident voice.
‘Joe Lynch? Come on in.’
The room continued the theme of comfortable opulence that had begun in the reception area. A wide oak desk and a high-backed chair sat in front of a row of large windows. Along the wall a beige sofa and two chairs huddled round a rectangular coffee-table. Burton motioned to the chairs.
‘So. What have you come to see me about?’
‘I’m not sleeping.’
‘Why aren’t you sleeping?’
Joe paused. He hadn’t thought they’d get right into it. He’d imagined some chit-chat. A warm-up or something. He looked round the room, raising his eyebrows.
‘Must be some money in this psychology business.’
‘I do all right.’
‘How come you aren’t in a hospital?’
‘Private clients.’
‘What does a man charge for that these days?’
‘One hundred pounds an hour.’
Lynch hadn’t thought Burton would tell him.
‘I must be in the wrong line of work.’
‘What line of work are you in, Joe?’
Silence.
Fifteen floors up. The traffic was quiet on the road below. Cars hummed past, providing a low background music. Joe knew what was going on. The short, staccato answers. They were to encourage him to speak. Make the patient do the running.
‘Why can’t you sleep, Joe?’
‘You tell me, Doc.’
‘That’s not how it works.’
Silence.
Burton stopped speaking. He wasn’t going to chase Lynch. If someone wouldn’t meet you halfway, he knew there was no point.
The silence hung in the air for ten seconds, then twenty. It was a stand-off, neither man wishing to blink. After a minute Lynch spoke.
‘So what do you know about me, Doc?’
‘Nothing.’
‘MacSorley must have sent a file.’
‘No.’
‘How come?’
‘Works better this way.’
‘So you’re telling me you have nothing?’
‘Joe Lynch. Monday. Eleven o’clock.’
For a moment Lynch imagined himself as a blank page. No marks. No scars. Free to be whatever he wanted. Free to. .